1. Field
The following invention disclosure is generally concerned with vehicle event recorder systems and specifically concerned with data transfer between two primary nodes of a distributed vehicle event recorder system based upon a portable memory and data transfer management schemes.
2. Prior Art
Vehicle event recorders are devices which record data relating to vehicle use on roads and highways, and this recorded data sometimes includes video data captured by a video camera. Data is recorded to a recording medium in an on-board system such as magnetic tape recorders. One well known device used in vehicle event recording systems is a common VHS system. In more modern vehicle event recorders systems, a “hard drive” type storage medium is winning favor as data transfer is greatly facilitated in such systems, In even more sophisticated systems, a high-performance inexpensive semiconductor memory is used to preserve data captured in a triggered vehicle event such as a vehicle crash or other accident.
In all of these cases, it is desirable to transfer information from the car to an administrator's workstation—not part of the vehicle—where the data can be reviewed and analyzed. For many years the most common way to transfer event record data merely meant removing a videotape from a VHS system installed in the trunk of the car and to play the videotape at a similar video player/recorder in an office or laboratory. Police automobiles generally used such systems and many arranged like this remain in widespread use today.
With recent improvements in digital technologies, modem systems are now arranged to record event record data on a on-board digital memory system. Either a hard drive type electro-mechanical memory or a semiconductor memory is suitable for recording data collected in a vehicle event recorder systems. To transfer data from a vehicle installation to an analysis computer, an administrator might plug-in a computer at a service garage to read stored data. Data stored in the vehicle event recorder memory is read by the computer and is sometimes transferred thereto for further processing. In most vehicle fleets using digital recorders today, a download technician goes from car-to-car with a laptop computer each night after vehicles have returned from their service day. It is a tedious task to manually read data from large fleet of vehicles and automated systems are becoming highly desirable.
In exceptionally advanced high-performance systems, a vehicle returning from a service day enters a WiFi envelope or “hotspot”, is detected and recognized, and a download operation transfers collected event record data from the vehicle to a centralized server resident memory. Human input is not required and the system is entirely automatic. A driver does not even need to be aware of the system's existence. Merely entering the download space, for example the vehicle parking facility, causes a complete data transfer with regard to any event record datasets captured during use of the vehicle. While these automated systems are state-of-the-art and extremely useful and efficient, they do not address all possible scenarios which remain of considerable interest.
Automated WiFi systems are well suited for use with large vehicle fleets, however they are not always useful for vehicle event recorders arranged for individual or family use. Although WiFi systems are generally available in many homes, in some cases a vehicle is not parked within range of a home WiFi. In addition, not all users of vehicle event recorder systems are interested in configuring them for use in conjunction with a home WiFi. In these cases it is desirable to provide for an easy and efficient data transfer scheme which does not require installation and maintenance of complex computing network equipment.
Even though high-performance vehicle event recorders used in these systems have a resident memory and that resident memory is specifically provided to store a plurality of event record datasets, for example even up to more than 100 event record datasets, the memory is not suitable for archiving data for extended periods. It is preferable to transfer event record data from the vehicle event recorder to a station where that data can be stored in a more permanent and secure fashion. Further, as vehicle event recorders do not provide for replay and analysis of event record data as they include no facility for that, it is intended that a vehicle event recorder capture data and preserve it in the short-term with the intention of transferring it to cooperating systems at a later time in a data transfer process.
While systems and inventions of the art are designed to achieve particular goals and objectives, some of those being no less than remarkable, these inventions have limitations which prevent their use in new ways now possible. Inventions of the art are not used and cannot be used to realize the advantages and objectives of the systems disclosed here following.